Never to be outdone by his former best friend and co-star, David Cross, Bob has directed a rock video! (Check out David's video for Superchunk, hilarious.) This is for the band Rogue Wave and it is hilarious as usual. Bob Odenkirk is the best isnt he? I wish he was my alcoholic uncle. I'd help him through his withdrawal symptoms and he'd tell me stories about the golden age of late 90s comedy. Sigh, a boy can dream.
Bob Odenkirk is directing a live stand-up movie by buddy Jeff "Curb Your Enthusiasm" Garlin. I don't know what will become of the material once it is filmed, but filmed it shall be! The footage was taped on May 12th. Bug Bob and Jeff to get a copy!
And here is a clip of Garlin's stand up for those curious Cassandra's out there.
Bob Odenkirk recently interviewed Tim and Eric of "Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job!". Here is a transcript of the interview as posted by Bob on his website:
E: hey bob
t hey, how’s it going
b Good, you guys
t we’re doing good.
(they check out the new site and compliment me on it)
Tell me about T & E nitelive…
T: It’s uhm, it’s really gonna be live, what you see on line is what’s really happening in the studio. We’re not thinking about it too much, planning it the day of the show.
E: It’s really going to give us a chance to talk about ehings we love,. The first episode is going to be all about Papa Johns pizza and the kind of dips they offer.
T: We’re going to do as much free advertising for large corporations as possible
B: isn it amazing that some people didn’t get Shrek?
E: it was quite amazing, alot of our fans didn’t get it either…
T: I get people not getting the 1st or 2nd, but…
E: But after all the ads for shrek, you just have to get it
T: If I was more cynical I thnk I might have thought this was legitimate, like this was some guerrilla marketing campaign.
B: Who are some of the guests going to be on NITELIVE?
E: most of the time it’s going to be guests from “Awesome Show”. Our first night the musical guest is David Liebe Hart and Richard Dunn is also a guest
T: Richard Dunn has a beard now and will be shaving his beard live…
B: This kind of reminds me of Andy Kaufman a little, but not with the creepy aspect of trying to figure out what kind of “statement” is being made…
T: Also a little of the first season of letterman, where it really was “anything goes”
B: How long is the show?
T: The show is supposed to be 3 minutes.
E: We did a test last week and it was 20 and we still didn’t hit all the material we wanted to do…
T: It’s probably going to be half hour.. 15 minutes to half hour.
B: You will be doing this while you’re doing Awesome Show. Alot of work, right?
E: It is a lot of work, but we are going to try to incorporate “AWESOME” into NITELIVE.
T: it’s for people who like our show, so…if you don’t like AWESOME you probably won’t be into NITELIVE
B: I just want to say it is the tv show I am most excited about, outside of the show David and I just wrote for HBO.
T: We’re really trying not to overthink it…
E: and the fun part is you can skype us in and talk to us via webcam…
B: I use Skype. I talk to the Straitjacket guys in England on it.
T: Do you ever use the Webcam?
B: No. One last thing in this extensive interivew. Tell me about TIMANDERIC LIVE in Vegas.
E: It’s going to be our ultimate live show. See some T&E bits we did on our live tour, also a lot of people you’ve seen on our show and you will see them live.
B: It’s for hbo…somehow?
E: Yeah, it’s at Ceasers palace.
B: How much are tickets?
T: It is a little expensive. It’s way too expensive for the show you’ll get.
E: But the neat thing is, the night before, on the 14th they are doing a big party for Awesome show, and fans can come. It’s at Ceaser’s Palace at 8 oclock, totally free.
Bob: Thanks guys, for my first and last interview.
Bob recently appeared on Tom Green's internet talk show. He played this really depressing and funny version of himself that you should just see rather than read me mangle his intent. What's funnier still is the Youtube commentators seem to have taken him seriously and there are many comments like "I hate you now Bob!" etc. Amusing stuff! Bob Odenkirk almost makes Tom Green funny! Almost......
Here is a new short Bob wrote, directed, and played two roles in. It is an epic and sad tale of a man trying to get his movie pitched to a Hollywood bozo. The makeup on the Hollywood bozo he plays is really fantastic and I almost forgot it was him playing both roles. He really is a chameleon isn't he? Enjoy!
Yes I do the crossword puzzles. Whenever it's a three or four letter word and the clue is "to mimic" it is nearly always ape or apes. Sometimes aped. Sigh. My life.
Anyway, here is a long form essay Bob wrote for Filter magazine in which he pretended to be Simon Cowell of "American Idol" reviewing an elementary school talent show. Pretty funny stuff of course.
"
Simon Cowell Reviews Evergreen Elementary Spring Show (by Bob Odenkirk)
by Bob Odenkirk | 08.11.2007
“What…the hell…was that?”
I didn’t need to look to know exactly who was offering this stone-dry assessment of my children’s school’s song and dance tribute to spring. We live in Hollywood. The school is on Hollywood Boulevard. Why was he here? Maybe he’d just stumbled in, drawn by the smell of innocent blood. The mad post-show applause began to die down as he heated up.
“I mean…come on. First of all, this is supposed to be a talent presentation, yes? Where was the ‘talent?’ Dismal, top to bottom. Where do I begin? First grade? The costumes? Rags from a tie-dye experiment gone horribly wrong. The dancing? Like watching epileptics on roller skates. Utter chaos. Surpassed in awfulness only by the third grade. That girl in pigtails—was that a solo? I thought it might be a cry for help from a child who finally came to her senses.”
A mother huffed, “Well, I thought it was…musical.”
“It wasn’t,” he snapped.
One confused grandfather went on the advance, insisting, “The kindergarteners were cute.”
“The kindergarteners, dear sir, were crap and they should not be encouraged. Let this be their final performance. Don’t have them back. What were they supposed to be anyways? Dancing tampons?”
“I think they were supposed to be flowers…or cat-tails,” said a mother.
“No. No. They were tampons. Appropriate as it was bloody hell up there.”
With that, people headed for the door, but our man sprang to action, blocking their path and carrying on. “I’m not done. Am I the only one who teared up out of sheer pain during the ‘Small World’ finale? I want to say ‘poor choice of material’ but I hate to blame the material, dreadful though it may be. I mean, this is a song one would think is impossible to make more grindingly annoying than it famously is, but my dears, I tell you Walt Disney is vomiting in his refrigerated chamber. Are the parents of any sixth graders here? I see no hands. Understandable. Distance yourselves. That little playlet they performed about changing the world? Nothing has ever made me long so for an apocalypse. It’s just a bit too late now because we all had to suffer that. Your children have no style, no presence of any kind; they were thick lumps of carbon held together by fatty-fat-fat cells emitting some sort of strained yodel. Their trite speechifying about recycling and solar power was ear-numbing and the expressions on their pasty faces put me in mind of a donkey who’d been beaten into a permanent state of shock. Taken together I found the show cringe-inducing and overlong by about an hour.”
I looked at my watch, “But it was only 45 minutes long.”
“Exactly,” he smiled. “Can someone answer me, what was the point of all the flashbulbs and the non-stop video-ing? Are you all intending on blackmailing your children if they ever threaten to take the stage again?”
A teary-eyed grandmother could hold herself back no longer. “Those are for relatives who couldn’t make it.”
“You could just as simply have phoned them up and said, ‘You lucky bastard.’”
With that, he turned to allow the downtrodden to scuttle toward the door.
I remained behind, watching him. He seemed deeply content, like a maharishi talking to Charlie Rose, or like Charlie Rose talking to a maharishi. Then something occurred to me: “You forgot to mention the second grade. What did you think of them?”
His expression softened. “The second grade were absolutely, without question, bafflingly…superb. They had it all, from the paper elephant costumes to the dancing flags of third world countries—spot on. Simply…the reason these shows exist.”
“Are any of them, by chance, related to you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Yes…well…the little girl who did the cartwheels is. . . a friend of a friend.”
“’Friend of a friend?’"
“Niece.”
Bob Odenkirk has written for TV shows, including SNL, The Ben Stiller Show, and Get A Life. He also co-created and co-starred in Mr. Show, which ran on HBO for four seasons, and directed the feature films Melvin Goes to Dinner, Let’s Go to Prison! and The Brothers Solomon. His most recent writing venture, the original series of shorts Derek & Simon: The Show, airs this summer on Super Deluxe Broadband Comedy Network. "
Funny right? Now here is a movie I found on youtube that has almost the exact same premise:
Auspiciously close! Auspicious being a 10 letter word that means, um, well, sorta like suspicious but um, earlier in the alphabet.